NEXT! Racing's perennial search for a champion worthy of pinning all its emotional and hype-fuelled baggage on continues. Maybe the embryonic King Of Kings, currently being nurtured in Ballydoyle, could be the next candidate, because if Saturday's Vodafone Epsom Derby proved anything, it proved that Entrepreneur is not.

Hyped to the hilt after his 2,000 Guineas victory as the next Nijinsky, Shergar or any other illustrious name plucked from the past, Entrepreneur and an always uncomfortable-looking Michael Kinane could only struggle past the post in fourth, almost nine lengths behind Benny The Dip, a colt described by his trainer as "neurotic" and previously dismissed by his jockey as "moronic".

Hardly the stuff of legend but then Epsom has always been the supreme first test of candidates for legend. Derby excuses have always had a hollow ring and the great ones never feel the need to use them.

Perhaps significantly, Kinane and trainer Michael Stoute didn't have any to offer.

"He didn't come down the hill too well but he didn't do anything too well," said a bitterly disappointed Kinane. "He just never felt right. He was definitely not the horse he was at Newmarket. Possibly they will find something wrong with him but he did not run like the horse I know." All of which mattered not a whit to Benny The Dip, who ran exactly like the hardened professional we knew he was, even if he lasted out the mile and a half better than either John Gosden or Willie Ryan could have hoped.

If stamina had been Benny The Dip's Achilles heel, then being the target to shoot all the way up the straight would have tested it. Silver Patriarch's furious late finish, with Pat Eddery throwing the entire kitchen at the grey, tested it to the limit. Ignore the favourite's flop and this was still a Derby finish that will be conjured with years from now.

Unlike his rival, it was early speed that was the concern for Silver Patriarch and those concerns proved valid as the colt just could not go the early pace. Racing around Tattenham corner into the straight, Silver Patriarch was stone plum last, with Eddery bouncing in his saddle in apparent desperation.

That he picked up to such effect in the straight provided the Derby with its most dramatic finish since Secreto pipped El Gran Senor in 1984, but like on El Gran Senor, Eddery had to settle for second, the fourth time in 25 Derby rides he has filled the runner-up spot.

"He is a big, galloping horse and needs a track to suit. I'm looking forward to the Irish Derby, because that is a galloping track," Eddery said, and Benny The Dip is likely to take him on again at the Curragh too.

Gosden confirmed that plan immediately afterwards, but the Derby also confirmed that those who had previously doubted his ability to win the top races despite having a vast number of Sheikh Mohammed's blue bloods in his Newmarket stable, were off the mark. Ironically, though, his greatest success has come via an owner who has only one horse in training with him.

Landon Knight, a 72-year-old from Ohio who has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of nine because of polio, listened to the race over the phone from Ohio. "I couldn't hear anything after Tattenham Corner because of the crowd noise. It's unbelievable - for one's horse in England to have won the Derby - just incredible. I have to give the credit to big John (Gosden.) Credit is due to Gosden. Benny The Dip has been nicknamed Benny The Drip due to his tendency to sweat up but the 46-year-old trainer has learned to "read" the horse.

"Willie (Ryan) rode him on Thursday and when I saw him having to boot him down the hill for his second canter and heard him say this is the most laziest, most moronic horse I've ever ridden, I knew things would come right. The horse is now Willie's ride, unless Frankie Dettori is available" Gosden said.

It was an emotional race for Gosden in more ways than the obvious. His late father "Towser" trained Charlottown as a two-year-old but retired due to ill-health and had to watch as the colt won the 1966 Derby, trained by someone else.

"I remember him standing in the winner's enclosure that day. I'm sure it was fulfilling for him to see the horse he trained win the Derby but I'm also sure it was a very devoid feeling for him," he said.

The 1997 Derby was devoid of very little, except the crowning of what so many had hoped was going to be a great racehorse. The Entrepreneur bubble may have burst, but on the Curragh in 20 days time, Benny The Dip might just inflate his own reputation even more.